Aitken, Ben

Are you getting enough? Ben Aitken wasn’t. Increasingly flat and decreasingly zen, he knew that something had to change. So he joined a lawn bowls club. About a week later, he continued his assault on the doldrums by taking a cheerleading class. Then – with an almost entirely reformed selfhood winking appealingly on the horizon – he went cold-water swimming and was back to square one. Despite the inevitable setbacks and missteps, it was becoming clear to Aitken that the very pursuit of fun was a great route to feeling less naff. And so he made a vow to go after the f-stuff with as much gusto as he could muster. He filled his calendar with a plethora of potentially pleasurable pursuits. Although the results were mixed, Aitken’s year of making merry left him feeling undoubtedly better. Which invites the question: if fun is such a reliable mood-swinger, shouldn’t we be having more of of it?